Saturday, February 27, 2010

Two Views, One Plan: Feb. 22, 2010

There is one debate that has been raging since before Obama took office... Health Care. On Feb. 22, I grabbed two articles, one by CNN and the other by Fox, and sat down with them. I wanted to analyze the coverage of health care on that day to see what someone reading on Feb. 22 would be exposed to from both sides. I looked at the layout of each article and assessing their headlines, content, word choice, and overall slant to try and understand the frame of each article. I have ruled that the Fox News article was less partisan (though still conservative) than CNN which has taken a more leftist view. I have the analysis to prove it.


HEADLINES

Headlines are important. they are the most important thing on a newspaper or website. In fact, 44 percent of Google users just skim headlines without ever reading the articles.

CNN- How Obama wants to pay for health reform

CNN's headline was pretty straight forward, however, the use of the word "reform" can be touchy. A reform is a beneficial change, and by saying reform instead of plan gives the image that it is necessarily a good idea. However, the headline is a good because they could have easily written a headline from the first paragraph about how the health care plan would reduce the deficit by $100 billion.

Fox-White House Talks Compromise, but GOP Claims Health Care Plan is Merely Camouflage

I gave Fox a break (I beat up on them a lot). When analyzing their headline, I did not use the headline that lead to the article which read "Health Compromise - or Camouflage?". In this headline there are three powerful verbs, "talks", "claims", and "is", arranged in a way that makes the White House seem shady and non-trasparent (who knows? They might be).

ARTICLE ARRANGEMENT

Article arrange is important because of the 56 percent of reader left, many of them stop reading after the first few sentences. I looked at what the article mention in the first sentence and then measured the distance between that and the first opposing point in the article.

CNN's First sentence- "President Obama unveiled a $950 billion proposal for reforming health care Monday, and promised that the plan is fully paid for and would even reduce the deficit in 10 years."

Anyone walking away from the article would assume that Obama's health care was a good idea. It's not until 7 long sentences later that the article mentions that some of the changes to the health care policy aren't free. In fact, the article reads like a big advertisement for Obama's health care plan, at one point it even referring to it as a "supermarket" where customers can "easily comparison shop". Let's see what Fox has to say...

Fox's First sentence- "The White House issued proposals Monday for Health care reform that have won kudos from several Democratic lawmakers, a sure sign, say Republicans, of how little GOP input is in the plan."

Fox's first sentence is a far more subdued than its headline. I believe Fox played a straighter hand than CNN in this respect because it put the comments from the White House in defense of it's actions earlier in the story (5 sentences instead of 7).

OVERALL TONE


CNN's piece reads like a big advertisement for Obama's health care plan at first, then it goes into detail (at length) about the specifics of the plan. by going into the specifics, however, you runoff any one than is afraid of numbers, leaving them with the impressions left from the first 8 sentences. Not that the health care plan is a bad idea, CNN just positions it as too good to be true. The difference between the first half of CNN's article and the second is striking. It goes from relating the health care plan to something simple, like shopping at a super market, then it jumps straight into heavy numbers and technical jargon. This sudden shift could be an attempt to try and keep the people that know very little about the mechanics of health care on Obama's side.

Fox's article, although a little skewed to the right, is more fair in it's assessment of it's particular situation because it shows opposing opinions earlier in the story. Fox still uses some inflamatory statements like "Indeed in it's efforts to appear bipartisan", but the article lays out several items that the White House has incorporated into the bill from the Republican agenda.

REMARKS


Although these articles are talking about different aspects of the health care debate, it is important to compare them because what the news determines on a particular day (Feb. 22), affects it's readers outlook on the situation. Fox talked about the White Houses unwillingness to compromise and CNN talked about the financial benefit of the plan. When two of their respective readers come together, they will be under totally different frames of mind.

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